“Better than this anyhow.”
Adair looked at Fork. “And you’re recommending it?”
“Strongly.”
“I’m still going to go see my daughter.”
“It’s still a dumb idea.”
“He could fly down,” Vines said.
“From where?”
“You told me there used to be a field here.”
“I also told you the Feds closed it down.”
“That wouldn’t stop some pilots.”
“Who you got in mind?”
“That guy who owns Cousin Mary’s,” Vines said. “Merriman Dorr. He told me he could get himself a Cessna and fly us anywhere-providing the mayor said it was okay.”
After several seconds of frowning thought, Fork reluctantly agreed. “Well, at least it makes more sense than driving.”
Vines rose, walked over to Fork and stood, staring down at him. “I don’t quite understand all this sudden concern for our safety, Chief.”
“It’s not all that sudden,” Fork said. “I’ve been worried ever since Norm Trice got killed and those photos turned up. Soldier getting killed doesn’t make me worry any less. But what got me really bothered was when the mayor and I compared notes.”
Fork looked from Vines to Adair and back to Vines to make sure he had their attention. “Remember your telling everybody out at Cousin Mary’s about that doorman who gave you a description of a short fat priest with a snout who stuck those two shoeboxes full of money in the judge here’s closet?”
Vines said yes, he remembered.
“Well, if what B. D. says you said is right, then that doorman’s description of a short fat priest is a perfect fit to the description I got from an eyewitness who claims he saw the same guy go in and come out of the Blue Eagle the night poor old Norm Trice got shot.”
“Also a priest?” Vines asked.
“Dressed up like one. Now this same description, except for the priest suit, fits what one of my best detectives says the plumber who shot Soldier looks like. You both heard Ivy. And what all this means is that I’m damn near positive that the guy with the two shoeboxes full of money and the guy who killed Norm Trice and Soldier Sloan are all one and the same.”
“You’re also beginning to sound as if you know who he is,” Vines said, some reluctant admiration creeping into his tone.
“I know all right. He’s Teddy Smith-or Teddy Jones-depending on which one he feels like that day. The mayor and Dixie and I knew the little shit twenty years ago when I ran him out of town after he-well, it doesn’t matter now.”
“Smith,” Adair said, looking at Vines. “Wasn’t that the name of the man Paul told you he was going to see in Tijuana, the one-”
Three quick hard raps on the hotel room door interrupted Adair, who, now wearing a thoughtful expression, went over to open it. B. D. Huckins nodded at him as she strode in, ignored Kelly Vines and crossed the room to where the chief of police sat. She stood with her fists on her hips, glaring down at Sid Fork and impressing Adair with the way she managed to dominate the room without saying a word.
She was still glaring down at the chief of police when she said, “Cancel it, Sid.”
“Cancel what?”
She used a small, almost savage clenched-fist gesture to indicate and cancel Vines and Adair. “Them,” she said. “Everything. It’s all off.”
“Goddamnit, B. D., you can’t do that.”
“Watch me,” she said.
Chapter 26
Sipping occasionally from the glass of straight bourbon she had demanded and Kelly Vines had served her, Mayor B. D. Huckins paced the ocean-view Holiday Inn room, describing with curious relish how she first had learned of the death of Soldier Sloan.
“Was it from the chief of police or the city attorney or even from those two dopers who drive the meat wagon for Bruner Mortuary?” she asked, obviously not expecting an answer. “No, it was from Lenore Poole who strings for that flaky west coast radio network. And guess what Lenore wants to know?”
Since this wasn’t a real question either, none of the three men answered. The mayor took another small sip of her bourbon, turned to the window, inspected the Pacific and said, “Lenore wants to know my reaction to the serial killer who’s terrorizing Durango.”
She turned quickly from the window to fasten the cold gray stare on Sid Fork. “So here’s Lenore, who teaches English and a course in journalism at the high school-and who’s convinced she’s going to be a TV reporter in Santa Barbara, or maybe even down in L.A., once she saves up enough to have a little corrective surgery done on that chin of hers-telling me about how some plumber stabbed Soldier Sloan to death in an elevator.”
“I thought she was saving up for a Harley,” Sid Fork said. “That’s what she told me.”
B. D. Huckins ignored him and turned to Jack Adair, who sat in one of the room’s three easy chairs and appeared to be the most sympathetic member of her audience.
“Lenore says, Hey, there’s this old Sloan guy today and poor Norm Trice last night, so don’t you think it looks like we’ve got a serial killer on the loose? But all I can tell her is that I can’t comment on an ongoing investigation and she’d better talk to the chief of police, who, Lenore tells me, she’s been trying ‘to get ahold of’-this is an English teacher now-except he can’t be found.” Huckins switched the cold gray eyes back to Fork. “So where the fuck were you, Sid?”
“Right here.”
“Then why didn’t you call me-or have somebody call me?”
“I thought somebody did.”
The mayor responded to this admission of obvious incompetence with a resigned headshake and turned again to Jack Adair, the ex-politician, who remained her most sympathetic listener. “So now Lenore takes off in another direction and says if I won’t agree they’re serial murders by a crazed killer, maybe I’ll at least admit it’s a crime wave. And I tell her, Sorry, Lenore, no crime wave either, and hang up.”
She turned to Fork again. “That’s when I start calling around, Sid, trying to find you. But by then my phone starts ringing-so much for unlisted numbers-and it must be one hell of a slow news day because papers, TV and radio stations from all over are calling me and-”
“Where’s all over?” Fork asked.
“San Francisco. Vegas. L.A. Santa Barbara. San Diego. San Jose. Even Oakland. To me, that’s all over. And they all want to know about the, quote, hysteria that’s gripping a small sleepy California coastal town, unquote. A couple of them even played me parts of Lenore’s nutty radio story that adds two years to my age and says Durango’s thirty-eight-year-old mayor, quote, hotly denied, unquote, that two murders in two days are either a crime wave or the work of a serial killer. But check this, Sid. Lenore must’ve talked to some of your people because she said Soldier’s name is S. Pershing Sloan and that he’s a retired major general.” She paused, wrinkled her forehead into a puzzled frown and said, “Pershing?”
“His middle name,” Fork said, leaning forward in his chair and looking interested for the first time. “What’d Lenore say about Norm Trice?”
“She called him the owner of Durango’s most fashionable night spot.”
“Sounds like Lenore,” Fork said with a grin and asked, “So what’d you tell ’em, B. D.-all those reporters?”
“I told them to call the chief of police, who’d informed me that an arrest is imminent.”
“Good.”
